Delegitimisation

Delegitimisation (also spelled delegitimation) is literally the withdrawal of legitimacy, usually from some institution such as a state, cultural practice, etc. which may have acquired it explicitly or implicitly, by statute or accepted practice.

Delegitimization is the process of constructing a "categorization of groups into extreme social categories which are ultimately excluded from society".[6] Delegitimization provides "the moral and the discursive basis to harm the delegitimized group, even in the most inhumane ways".[4]

Daniel Bar-Tal identified five rhetorical strategies by which delegitimization occurs: dehumanization (e.g. "uncivilized savages"), trait characterization ("idiots", "parasites"), outcasting ("murderers", "terrorists"), use of political labels ("Nazis", "imperialists"), and delegitimization by group comparison (e.g. with the Huns).[7] Volpato et al. found eight delegitimizing strategies,[8] including trait characterisation, political labels, group comparison, segregation, outcasting and using a delegitimized group to stigmatize another group. For example, images of derogated target groups were published in the Italian Fascist magazine La Difesa della Razza in the 1930s.[9]

A process affecting actual beliefs rather than mere rhetoric is presumed to be at work however. An early controlled study published in 1960 showed that "serious and violent conflict can change previously held positive views of the other group" as in the case of the 1959 border disputes between India and China, eventually leading to the 1962 Sino-Indian War. "Before the dispute, Indian students considered the Chinese to be artistic, religious, industrious, friendly, progressive, and honest. But, as the conflict developed, the Chinese were stereotyped by the same Indian students also as aggressive, cheating, selfish, war-mongering, cruel and shrewd."[10]

Bar-Tal found that the process mostly occurs in the cases of intractable conflicts and ethnocentrism.[7] According to Bar-Tal, in these contexts delegitimization is part of an unholy trinity together with beliefs in justness of own goals and collective self-victimhood.[11]

During the same period, it has been suggested that the main effect of the 'Consciousness Revolution' was to at least partially delegitimize all aspects of the socio-political-economic system in the United States, with effects that are seen to this day. (Robert Bellah's 'The Broken Covenant').

The paired concepts of "legitimize" and "de-legitimize" have gained currency in discussions about nuclear disarmament.[14]